Sorry for the super-late reply/post. Between two jobs and shoveling several hundred cubic feet of snow, it’s hard to stay on top of the postings at BC.

BTW, Wretchard, the extended deadlines are greatly appreciated. The 72-hour model was almost impossible for me to make comments if the thread went up in the middle of the week as opposed to a weekend.

And not that anyone is even reading this thread anymore but here goes.

Marriage is a liberty two people can exercise together. We cannot elevate people civically because they choose to marry each other; then we are punishing single people who choose not to get married or aren’t
“lucky enough” to fall in love. You can’t adjudicate emotions. You can only allow for them to exist, and by obtaining a marriage LICENSE, people are exercising that liberty to state to society “This is the person I love.”

Your argument rests on the assumption that the purpose of marriage is individual fulfillment, and that the only requirement is individual choice.

This assumption, that individual choice trumps all other interests (the radical but quite possible extreme of your assumption being that individual choice is the ONLY interest), is historically ill informed. Sadly, it is also quite symptomatic of younger generations of Americans, and a lot of other societies where radical autonomy, sentimentalism and hedonism have become the primary drivers of culture.

This is why I said several posts ago that a return to first principles is needed.

Our almost complete abandonment of any consciousness of first principles is exemplified by how many otherwise intelligent people can’t or won’t think outside the narrow little cultural box of “America 1965-2010” with respect to the definition and purpose of marriage.

What is marriage for? What is its purpose? Is it all about the individuals who enter into the arrangement, or are there interests of other entities at stake also?

The intensely social and public nature of marriage ceremonies throughout history and across cultures (and even you yourself had the telling phrase, “to state to SOCIETY”) suggests — or, put more strongly, is evidence of — its dimensions beyond a purely private arrangement entered into between individuals. Declaring it a private matter solely between those individuals in order to give political supremacy to individual choice is not only to contradict all of human history but to ignore the nature of current custom as well.

That marriage has also overwhelmingly across time and cultures been defined as a man-woman union also means something and was defined thus for a reason. What is that reason? What is the teleology of male-female sexual union that is different from male-male and female-female sexual unions? What does male-female give us that the others cannot? (Jeopardy theme … tick tock, tick tock.)

Here’s a wild thought: Maybe, just maybe, human experience over hundreds of generations across thousands of years imprinted upon human consciousness that perpetuating the human race via having children was a good and necessary thing.

An even wilder thought: Maybe, just maybe, human experience over hundreds of generations across thousands of years taught us that the best and most stabile process for the raising of children to functional adulthood was to have some kind of official arrangement whereby the parents of a child were bound to each other for life.

And the most wild thought of all: Maybe, just maybe, the most effective form of this social arrangement, that which allowed the most diversification of the human gene pool by allowing the broadest number of people to get married who wanted to, is monogamous marriage — one man, one woman.

This is ridiculous because you act like once gay marriage becomes legal all these problems that NEVER existed are suddenly going to affect ALL marriages.

The issue is not whether the example is ridiculous but whether it is logical. Engaging in serious argumentation means you need to consider the logical extremes of both your and your opponent’s arguments. “If this principle is applied with rigorous consistency, what are the extreme results that could possibly happen?”

If the purpose of marriage is, as you argue, confined to fulfilling the individuals entering into it; and if “their [the individuals’] definition of commitment” becomes the only prevailing standard of legal definition … then there are no logically consistent grounds on which to deny marriage to any consenting individual who wants to get married in any arrangement whatsoever.

If same-sex marriage is an undeniable right for gays under this reasoning, then, in the interest of legal and logical consistency, polygamy (including bigamy, polyandry, and group marriage) is also undeniable to anyone who wants it. Think there’s no demand for any of that? Think again. Also expect ages of consent to be challenged and defined downward. Think there’s no demand for 12-year-old brides? Think again.

Think that all of this, even if it comes to pass, will remain strictly “fringe” behavior and will not have an affect on traditional monogamous marriages or society at large? Think again.

I can assure you that there are no limits to the human sexual appetite and the ways in which people will seek to force society to accommodate their individual practices.

Starting some forty-odd years ago, the United States entered into a massive social experiment with sexuality and marriage, with not nearly enough debate and deliberation, considering the scale of the consequences that have come to pass.

And that’s just the point. Forty-odd years ago, those most ardently pushing the radical changes, and those who ended up most eagerly adopting them in their private lives, did not think the consequences would be as broad and long-ranging as they have turned out to be. It was only two generations ago that people were being scared into believing that a population bomb was about to explode and too many humans would overwhelm the planet, with massive starvation and wars resulting. In that environment, the Pill probably seemed like a good thing. NOBODY foresaw the demographic crisis of too few babies that has thrown many developed countries into downward population spirals.

Italy and Japan, non-breeding themselves out of existence? 1970 – ridiculous. 2010 – no so much.

Not to mention the host of other consequences we are reaping here in America as a result of the massive experimentation with no-fault divorces, Roe v Wade, and de-stigmatizing giving birth out of wedlock (every single one of these pushed under the banner of having “compassion” for those poor unhappy individuals in meanly limiting circumstances).

In 1970, they would have said that a 30+% out-of-wedlock birth rate would never happen. “Ridiculous.” Likewise, that 1 out of every 3 pregnancies would end in abortion. (1 out of 2 in the inner cities.) “Ridiculous.” “Never gonna happen.”

Uh huh.

I hate to pull the age card, and really I’m not that old myself … but even as a Gen Xer, I can tell you that the older you get, the broader your imagination becomes with regard to what people are capable of. And how relentless the assaults on societal restraints are.

Youth has passion and energy. But American youth since the 1960s (and Gen X was no exception) have been led to believe, mistakenly, that they are uniquely open-minded among all the homo sapiens in all of history. Sadly, what passes for open-mindedness is just naivete. That you caution us fogies not to use the phrase “traditional values” because to your generation the word signals slavery and barefoot & preggers, is itself indicative of the successful indoctrination campaign that the left has waged in our schools with regard to American history and American culture.

BTW I do agree with you that “Judeo-Christian” is a more accurate term for describing “traditional” American values. But if you think that is “less inflammatory” a term, then you are kidding yourself. “Traditional” *was* the secular fall-back word after “Judeo-Christian” was made lingua non grata thanks to the ACLU. Now you are telling us that the connotations of “traditional values” are scary-scary-negative as well.

Again, pulling the age card here … one of the things you learn the hard way is that ceding the terms of debate to progressives is a losing endeavor. They are not interested in debate. They want to shut you up altogether. When a phrase like “traditional values” automatically makes you think of things as reprehensible as slavery and dehumanized women … as opposed to, say, things like “adultery is wrong” and “people shouldn’t swear like sailors in public” … you ought to be asking yourself, “why do I make those automatically repulsive associations?” and “who has taught me to make those repulsive associations?” — rather than blindly buying into the repulsive associations.

The inverting of the meaning of words themselves is another progressive tactic. With this tactic, they steal and destroy culture, history, identity, and eventually, free thought itself.

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

I would love to have a sustained and honest cultural debate about the purpose of marriage. We are at a point where if we do not recover first principles now, they stand in danger of being lost forever. It’s just difficult to have an honest cultural debate when too many on the other side are convinced (and will never be unconvinced) that you, the conservative, are an uptight bigot, and that you should go the way of the dodo.